


I Don't Know What I Can Save You From

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crisis of Faith, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, The Force Is Not Kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:30:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: The configuration of their relationship altered some years ago -- and then, changed again. But with the Empire beginning its first incursions into the Holy City, Baze and Chirrut can feel the approach of yet another change.One that could spell the end of their relationship altogether. If that is how the Force wills it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I haven't been writing or reading much over the last few weeks -- brain fading away, and all that -- but I started sketching out this fic idea back around New Year's and for some reason, had the urge to work with it this weekend. It's entirely indulgent, and is really just me wanting to flex the boundaries and limits of the characters' relationship. Especially when it comes to the Force and what Chirrut senses of it. So...I have no idea what this is, really. Except it's a story. We'll go from there.

It is very late when he returns to NiJedha. But for all their prosaic, prescribed ways of life, Baze knows that he could go to the Temple of the Kyber and be welcomed there. Even if the majority of the temple is sleeping, odds are that Chirrut will be yet wakeful. Sometimes it seems as though Chirrut never sleeps at all – and even if he is abed, he would readily rouse again if Baze only asked him to.

But he does not. He stays instead in the stews of the lower wards of the city, for all his excuse of a need for sleep hardly holds up when the crew coaxes him out into the darkening night. The narrow streets are lit by strings of patterned lanterns of every cut and colour, the air redolent with crispy-skinned barbecue and simmering spice; under that lies the rich malted scent of brewed lager, the roasting beans of nutty local caf, the steeping of tea and the roasting of nuts.

It has been a long day taken across multiple zones, and Baze ought to be sleeping. He certainly had not managed anything like proper rest on this return journey. It had not helped, that for a brief moment, he had believed they would need to force their re-entry to the holy city. They have all be aware of the growing _interest_ in the resources beneath the crust of their moon, birthed bright and burning from red stone. But it is only recently that it has begun to escalate. The fist of the Empire is beginning to tighten to stranglehold, and the air has never been anything other than thin upon the winter deserts of Jedha.

In that alone, Baze knows he will not be able to go long without seeking Chirrut. The man is a fool, and reckless with it; if anyone will spearhead the attempt to repel an Imperial army with but staff and lightbow, his name be Chirrut Îmwe.

But there have been no incursions of the Empire to the temple, or so the rumours say. It is but a matter of time before it happens – and knowing that, any observer would consider it odd for a known subversive element to attempt to enter the compound by cover of night, still coated in the dirt and blood of most recent mission.

But he knows it’s just an excuse. The only thing that has ever kept Baze Malbus from Chirrut Îmwe has been Baze Malbus himself.

The long draught of his lager barely touches the empty ache low in his gut, leaving him staring silent into the remnants of its foaming head. For the longest time, he had not imbibed alcohol of any kind. Instead he had come to the temple young, witt fire burning deep and true in his belly. It had been so easy to believe in everything then. And that young and foolish Baze had never wanted anything but to be the best of the Guardians, in true and lifelong service to the Whills.

Chirrut, on the other hand, had been taken to the temple as a child, clutched desperately in the arms of frantic parents. They’d been but peasants from a neighbouring village. Chirrut himself had been dying, burning up with terrible fever. The healers had laid their hands over him, their gifts given freely to those who had no means with which to pay for such service. But it been too late for his eyes, the fever taking the dark ember of their original colour and burning them as brightly blue as the sky. In doing so it had left him utterly blind. And then, too his parents had left him: a gift, they had said. A votive offering to the temple gods, given in gratitude in thanks for sparing his life – one now spent in service to those who had saved it.

But in reality they had simply had no use for a blind child. All they could see was a child who would be dependent unto adulthood, and beyond. Better he drift amongst those who might have some use for him, no matter how small. But for all Chirrut and Baze had come to the temple for opposing reasons, one by need and the other by faith, it had reversed itself in time. Chirrut stayed for faith, and Baze had left because it was the only need the temple could not meet. _This is the Force at work_ , Chirrut had argued, then; so lovely he had been, scarcely more than a teenager and yet the most devoted of their kind. _This is balance, don’t you see? Things change. They evolve, and become something new, something different. But I want you to stay, Baze. Please don’t go. This is where you belong_. _You will see that, if you stay here with me._

He’d been right, in a terrible way – any sense of belonging Baze had still felt by the end, it had been tied only and entirely to Chirrut. For all he’d played the role of guardian initiate to perfection, Baze had lost his faith in long slow leak. When he had been old enough to move to full initiation he’d only mouthed his vows, every word bitter ash upon his tongue. By contrast Chirrut had been alive and alight with his faith. At his side, Baze only went through the motions, for he could not imagine being anywhere else. As if that stubbornness could rebuild the faith he had slowly come to realise had never existed outside childish fantasy.

When he at last stumbles back to his home, Baze is not drunk. He only wishes he was. And his bed, when he finds it at last, should not feel so lonely; Chirrut but rarely comes so far down into the city these days, and he certainly has never stayed here. It’s a far cry from the days of their youth, when Baze had had to chase him down through alleyways and across rooftops. He’d have dragged him back to the temple by his hair, had they both not been shaven almost to the scalp.

But Chirrut has never shared this bed with him. It’s never struck him as particularly strange; this is the accommodation Baze had taken after leaving the order. Despite their bonds, taken in the temple while standing side by side, it has never quite been as it was. Not as it had been in those days before. It’s not for the first time that Baze regrets it.

While he intends to rise early, both exhaustion and the drink have conspired against him – and they are each stronger in tandem than they might ever be alone. It is late into the morning by the time Baze stumbles into the streets, ducking through the markets and the throngs of people who have managed to keep to their own decent schedule. But the air is different, these days; he is adrift in a sea of tense and troubled faces, and there are always those he does not recognise at all. NiJedha has always been a city of pilgrims, but these are just strangers.

Walking into the temple is an invigorating experience, even for those who choose not to partake of the faith. It is a bastion of cool, clean air, especially after the stews of the city below. Baze does not stop to enjoy it. He strides deeper into the complex itself, acknowledging the presence of others with only the tersest of courtesies. He doesn’t need to ask to know where it is that he wants to go: one of the deep meditation chambers, hung in silk and the air scented with incense and spice. A single monk stands before the altar, lighting candle after candle with a long taper that burns always and yet never burns out. Baze waits until the last candle grows to brightness under that steady cajoling touch. Only then does he speak.

“Chirrut.”

He turns, douses the taper’s end with a pinch of quick fingers. “Baze.” His eyes are peculiar in this dancing light, taking the golden hue and reflecting it back like a holy mirror. “Just back, are you?”

It’s light enough in its warning. But then Baze has never had the head nor the patience for outright lies. “I got in late yesterday.”

“How late?”

The sharp tone is like a whipcrack. Baze raises an eyebrow. “Does it matter?” he asks, and he knows it does even before Chirrut’s open challenge.

“I don’t know.” His arms rise, fold tight over his chest. “Does it?”

There are many things that Baze has given himself cause enough to regret, in this life. For all their old mistakes, he has never wanted one to be this. “Chirrut,” he begins, and then pauses; words have never been his particular strength, even when he has had a lifetime to learn of them at the receiving end of Chirrut’s silvered tongue. But the other man has no response for him now. He just carefully sets the extinguished taper upon the lintel, retrieving his staff. Here in the temple, he wears only robe and tunic, the bandolier and gauntlet set aside. But Baze’s eyes catch upon the flickering facets of the kyber crystal, and he knows that even with only his quick hands and quicker mind to hand, Chirrut will never be truly unarmed.

“I’m sorry.”

Chirrut doesn’t turn his head as he steps past, and through the opened doorway. “Apology accepted.”

Baze is not so sure that it is, even as Chirrut makes no protest as he trails his every quick step. But Chirrut, for all those around him assume he is always even-tempered, that he is always light-hearted even in his constant darkness – he still has his moods. In that he cannot be but the same as anyone else. Coaxing him from them is also harder than one might imagine.

Baze keeps his peace as Chirrut leads them to one of the stone balconies high in the temple building; it overlooks the city below with a view otherwise restricted to the soaring raptors, or the ships that come and go from the port. Here he stops, looking only outwards. Baze follows, for all it is perfectly familiar: the city on its plateau, red burned desert stretching around in all directions. Said mesa had been a sky forest, once, or so the scholars said. So little grows here naturally, now. The untilled land is almost sterile, save for the almost preternatural abundance of kyber crystals.

“Yurek came to see me,” Chirrut says, sudden. “When he arrived back.”

Baze _had_ wondered why their navigator had been later than the majority the night previous; he’d only caught them up some hours – and several cantinas – down the line. “Looking for the blessings of the temple, was he?” he says, purposefully light. Chirrut just stares across the sky, his eyes all but the same as its cold blue vastness.

“He came to see me,” he says, very quiet. “Just me.”

A faint flare of jealousy burns low in his gut, for all the wiry young man is more a wild-eyed acolyte than anything like a true romantic rival. Had such things been possible in these troubled times, Yurek Isfan would have been a late-life initiate.

Indeed, had things been different, Baze Malbus might himself have been the high priest accepting his final vows, now.

“Haven’t you told him yet that the temple can’t take him?” he says instead, and does not bother to mask his bitterness. “That not even the power of the Force can subvert the will of the Empire?”

It had been a mistake to speak such aloud. But something unbalanced, something _strange_ is between them here and now. And Baze’s sudden frustration is a harsh and hard thing. It had not been this way when he had left but a dozen cycles before. Something has changed, and he does not know what it is. Even if he had sensed it from almost an entire city away.

“He was telling me about the mission.”

The distance in the words makes him yearn to move closer, if only in body and not spirit. But Baze holds his distance. Their stubbornness has always been but one of their shared talents. “Why?” he asks, a little too rough. “I could have done that. If you’d asked.”

“But I couldn’t. Because you didn’t come here.” His lips twitch, but move to neither smile nor frown. “You stayed in the city.”

“Chirrut.” It’s exasperated in a way that isn’t fair to the other man’s intelligence. “I haven’t lived in the temple in years.”

He turns his head then, sharp and demanding. “But I’m here.”

“You’re _always_ here.”

And then he’s looking away, again, bright blue eyes clouded and unseeing. “You were paid well,” he says, quiet, and Baze feels his abdomen twist with the realisation he has been exposed to some kind of unexpected examination, one that he has failed – and badly.

“Of course,” he says, too quick. “I have alms for the temple—”

“But you didn’t take your full payment.”

His brow furrows. “What?”

“Yurek said there was a woman.” His persistence takes a wild tone, voice rising and sharpening with every syllable. “A Twi’lek woman.”

First his blood burns very hot – a moment later, and it is as cold as the desert air around them both. “I said no.”

“That’s what he said.” His lips twist, now, but the words come deceptively easy. “You shouldn’t have.”

At first he can only stare, disbelief rendering every word impossible. Then, he gropes first for the only idiot thought that comes to his addled mind. “But you don’t approve of prostitution.”

His smile is very thin, his teeth masked behind taut lips. “Not as a form of trafficking, no,” he says, carefully light. “But as a profession chosen by its practitioner, yes.”

“You don’t know which she was.”

He shrugs those slim, strong shoulders; the insouciance of the gesture is utterly at odds with the white-knuckled grip of hands about his staff. “But the point remains.”

“The _point_?” he asks, and his voice rises nearly to a shout; in the thin atmosphere, it sounds reedy, forced. “And what is this _point_? That you think I ought to break our vows and lie down in the bed of a stranger? One bought and paid for?”

Chirrut blinks, just once. “It doesn’t need to involve the exchange of money.”

The world has taken a different turn, indeed: it has utterly reversed and been too quick in the doing, leaving Baze dizzied and desperate, reaching one hand out to the balustrade at his side. “Chirrut.” For a moment he struggles to catch breath enough to speak, as though he’s run again the endless laps of the temple compound that had been part of their morning trainings for so long. “Chirrut, are…are you saying you _want_ me to cheat on you?”

He looks away, again, to the great skies above, empty save for the gas-shrouded bulk of NaJedha herself. “I wouldn’t see it like that.”

It could be but a mistake – one in a list of many today, it seems – but the words still fall quick enough from his lips. “ _You_ wouldn’t see it at all.”

Again he blinks, but stills a moment later. He could be but a statue, standing here, as silent and blind as those that line the hall of heroes below them both. “It would be better, that way.”

Baze himself must turn then; if not for the fierce grip of both hands now about the balustrade, he would have fallen: either to the stone behind, or the sky before. And he tightens them again, skin sunworn and callused, joints already beginning to creak out the vaguest protest of age.

“You are the only man I have known,” Chirrut says, his voice the low and careful tones he uses as a teacher to the children of the temple. “And I am the same, for you.”

Baze’s voice has grown hoarse, his heart lodged tight in his thickened throat. “I never wanted it any other way.”

“But what if it _must_ be that way?” It’s persistent, even in its barely concealed misery. “What if you _had_ to find someone else?”

He looks up then, incredulous and with a hurt so exquisite he feels as though he has hit the ground even before the long fall. “You want to leave me?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere!” It’s a shout, too loud and too fierce; Baze winces away and already Chirrut has subsided, voice bare whisper as he turns his face away.

“But what if we have no choice?”

The words hang between them for long moments, like a condemned man kicking out his last breaths upon his high gibbet. Then Baze forces his aching hands free of the stone, and takes a faltering step forward. “Chirrut,” he says, even as he dreads the answer. “What happened? While I was gone?”

He shakes his head, too fast, too furious, but still he doesn’t look back. “Nothing _happened_.”

“But this is from nowhere.” It’s both wondering, and suddenly furious. “Is this the Force, again? Have you had some fool vision that you’d rather listen to than the man standing right here in front of you?”

His incredulity does nothing to move Chirrut. “What does it matter if it is?” It’s uncharacteristically bitter, his chin held high where those blind eyes squarely meet his own now. “You don’t believe anymore.” His lips twist. “If you ever believed at all.”

“Well.” Jedha is never warm. But Base wonders now if he will ever feel heat again when he says now, “If this is what it brings the faithful, then I am glad I turned away.”

Chirrut’s lips twisted, but his words have turned from anger to resignation. “Do you truly mean that?”

“I don’t know.” And it’s honest, for all that it hurts. “But right now? I think I do.”

For a long moment together they stand here together, at the height of everything, only watching in their silence. Baze is the first to shake his head, turning away. There is nothing for it, when Chirrut is like this.

But as he begins to take the spiralling staircase down, he is struck by the bleak thought that perhaps Chirrut thinks only the same of him.

 

*****

 

He’s moving through the night-time streets when the flash of small movement catches his eye. He pauses, and the dim shadows soon resolve themselves to familiar shape. For a long moment he indulges himself, watching the small canid creatures as they bustle about their small lives in the dimmest corners of the holy city.

Presumably they had all been wild, once, but in these days they’re never seen beyond the borders of the cities and villages. Instead they live within them as permanently as the more advanced species around them. They are content and constant, easily distinguished from other rodents and mammals by the dark fur around their eyes, turning lighter down the nose; their long tails are silken and trailing, coveted by those slaved to fashion and the fancies of others. The darker eyes are as quick as their paws, and their little minds. The old stories had called them tricksters. Most of the temple acolytes forced to grow up with him called Chirrut the reincarnation of their mischievous spirit.

That thought has him looking away at last, and he moves quickly from the darkened alley he’d used only as a shortcut from one ward to the next. His destination is one of the small cantinas frequented by those of his own kind. One would find no monks in this place, no believers nor the faithful. There is nothing in this place to remind him of his partner. But Baze is scarcely into his first cup when the young navigator sidles close, drink held precarious in his sweat-soaked hands.

“You haven’t been to the temple in days,” he says, sudden, uncertain. Baze doesn’t meet his gaze – not that he could have, with how it skitters and scatters about the smoke-wreathed room.

“No.” He takes a drink, sloppy and overlarge. “I haven’t.”

But when he bothers to look over in the silence that follows, Baze finds a wretched expression upon that young face. He might have felt badly about it, had the circumstances not at least peripherally been contributed to by the man’s foolishness. And he glances down to the nearly empty flagon, and knows he should leave it here, should let it go. Yurek cannot fix what Baze does not even understand the breaking of. But he sleeps badly, when he is at such odds with Chirrut. Their proximity only makes it worse. But he knows he will return to him. It can be no other way.

_(“But what if it_ must _be that way?”)_

_(“What if you_ had _to find someone else?”)_

“Why did you go to see him?”

Then short, fierce edge of the words doesn’t actually stop Yurek from speaking. “I like him,” he says, and it’s guileless enough to be utterly honest, even as he trembles. “He’s…comforting. All of the monks are, I guess, but Brother Chirrut…” He sighs then, quick and harsh. “…he’s different.”

Baze cannot argue the point. It’s true as anything else: Chirrut _is_ different to the other monks. They are those who believe but hold themselves aloft from those who do not. And while Chirrut also _can_ be off-putting in his own way – his tongue is quick and his mind quicker still – he still wishes to share his faith with any who might seek it. He always has.

“He asked about the mission,” Yurek says, still stumbling like a clumsy child over his words. “Because you hadn’t come to see him yet.”

Baze grunts, takes the last swallow of the spiced tea. At his side, Yurek’s hand jerks, sloshing his own untouched drink over the ceramic of his mug.

“I told him about the Twi’lek because I thought he’d…well, not _like_ it. Not that she was offered to you.” His unhappiness grows with every quick draw of fresh breath, not that the air is worth the breathing in this smoke-addled den. “But I thought he’d like the fact that you didn’t even think twice about it.” He closes his eyes, too tight. “That you thought only of _him_.”

And Baze sighs. For all that being a guardian means a person all but belongs to the city, and the great deposits of kyber beneath its dusty streets, this is not the youth’s burden to bear. “Yurek,” he says, and almost manages to be gentle. “It’s not your fault.” With a scrape, he pushes the chipped flagon away, his stomach cold for all the heat of the drink within. “Chirrut…has been in a strange mood.”

He frowns. “Really?”

Speaking of his own personal troubles has never been something Baze has taken well too, but in the end this is something that affects them all. “Ever since the fall of the Jedi, he has been…troubled.”

“Chirrut?” Something akin to horror has begun to dawn across his thin features. “If _Chirrut_ is worried—”

“ _Stop_.” His own hand is held between them, palm outward, steady and still. “NiJedha still stands. The temple has not fallen.”

The young man stares deep into his untouched drink, face a rictus of barely withheld panic. “But how long until it does?”

Though he does not wear his full kit inside, Baze’s hand moves to the weapon his has not removed: the small blaster hooked to his belt. “It won’t.”

The intensity of his words surprises even Baze himself. But it’s still not enough to counter the unease of the navigator, who is shaking his head, still staring into the drink as if he could divine the future of an entire world in its churning depths. “I just don’t like to think of you two apart,” he whispers, and something lances straight and strong through Baze’s chest, like a blaster bolt fired at point-blank range. “It’s…not right,” Yurek adds, even as it sounds as though he speaks principally to himself. “It’s like it’s _part_ of all this.”

Baze knows the feeling. He’s never liked it. Though when he recalls the conversation atop the temple, over a dozen cycles beforehand, it is the first time he’s even been given the inkling that Chirrut is also capable of not liking it, too.

When he does manage to speak again, it comes slow, awkward; he doesn’t even know how it is supposed to be reassuring to the young man in the face of what lies before them all. “It is not the first time we have been parted.”

Yurek straightens as if a great current has been forced down his spine, eyes grown wide. “What?”

“Seven years.” The shape of it doesn’t fit his mouth well, much as the memory itself is a jagged fit amongst the rest in his mind. “It when both of us were barely twenty. I left the temple, and did not come back for nearly seven years.” He gazes into his own empty cup, curls one lip back. “It’s barely been that, again, since we came back together.”

“ _Why_?”

It’s bitterer still, to consider that there are those amongst both those of the temple and those of the streets who believe Chirrut and Baze are symbolic of that which never should be, never _could_ be, parted in twain. “There are reasons. There are always _reasons_.” And he stands, turns away. “They don’t matter, now. It’s done with.”

He pushes through the crowd to one of the exits he had been sure to note upon arrival, even though he knows this place all too well. But as he does so, Baze wonders if he has spoken the truth – if something _has_ changed, again, as it had then. And it matters, perhaps, because this time it might be irreversible. They’d sensed its coming long before it happened, then. Chirrut had known how Baze drifted away, even as he had pretended not to see it. This time, it seems Chirrut cannot close his eyes to it, nor his heart. This change is from without, rather than from within. Perhaps the distinction matters less than either of them might hope.

Out on the streets, the deepest hours of night are just coming on, but the life is just beginning. While his own stomach is a small hard knot, tempted not by the rich scented air seeping out from many a building, Baze still takes a moment to stop at one most familiar. When he leaves again, it is with small hot dumplings, each filled with vegetables. Two are further garnished with spiced meat, and while the others are wrapped in papers, Baze keeps these others out. Chirrut has never eaten the flesh of animals, though it is not a specific teaching of the temple. It is instead but one of his many quirks.

Cutting through the alleyway of earlier, Baze uses the calm to coax himself into eating first one, and then the other; he has scarcely eaten all day, and he needs the sustenance. He’s halfway through the second when he notices that his little shadow of before has returned. Bright, watchful eyes blink at him from the darkness, and he scoffs at its boldness. Swallowing the remnants of his own dumpling almost whole, and with eyes rolled to the slice of sky above, he works the greasy paper free of the trailing string. There are just four fat dumplings within, now, but Chirrut won’t object to sharing.

Holding one in the palm of his hand, he extends it outward. At first there is only silent stillness, the warmth of it small in his great hand, the sounds of the city almost hazy for all they are not so distant. Then the little animal darts forward. For all the quick economy of its motion, Baze senses no fear. Indeed it pauses instead, prize held light between small paws, eyes unblinking where they meet his own. Then, it turns with the moment and returns to the shadows, sharp teeth already deep and sure in the hot bun.

With hands pressed to thighs Baze pushes himself upwards, ignores the twinge in his knees. His fingers re-tie the string with far left deft skill than the vendor had used. Then he’s pushing back out into reality, rejoining the flow of people along NiJedha’s great main street. He’s moving up the incline, towards the watchful lights of the temple. They have much diminished since the days of their shared childhood. But still they provide stark beauty, even beneath the bowl of stars that is Jedha’s night sky.

It takes longer than it should to pass through the gates; they are always closed at dusk, when before the Emperor had ascended his throne, they’d always been left open. He receives only a half-hearted challenge from the sleepy monk on duty, retracted as soon as the man bothers to crack open an eye long enough to blearily recognise him. Sometimes he wonders if the temple is destined to fall. The thought is as bitter as the day he’d realised he himself had never believed in destiny at all.

He moves quick through the quiet arcades. But he does not go to the cells. Moving upstairs, instead, he curses the ridiculous number of steps that spiral ever upward. This is higher than even the observation areas that cluster beneath it, but at least it has reason enough for such lofty desire: this is the astronomical tower. He’d hated it from a very young age. He had nothing against the stars, or their study – rather, the intense loathing had come from the fact it had long been Chirrut’s favourite place, perched on the balustrade, with a dizzying fall only ever one poor choice away. It might have made some sense had he been able to see it – for the view was indeed extraordinary – but instead it left Baze with the constant fear that he’d wake one morning to be told Chirrut had finally fallen from the sky.

Though he remains quiet as he moved out into the tower’s roof, Baze had no real fear he would disturb Chirrut. Though the other man sits upon the very edge, he had always been able to hear his approach.

And no matter how much he wishes to go over there and haul him back to safety, Baze knows it would never be so simple as that.

“I brought you dumplings,” he says from perhaps three feet back; Chirrut turns just a little, just enough; the light of NaJedha outlines his profile in golden hue.

“A peace offering?”

Baze purses his lips. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“No.” A sigh, and he looks back out over the glittering mirage of NiJedha below. “No, I suppose not.”

Again Baze is struck hard by the urge to pull him down, to pull him back. But though he draws nearer, again, he only gives him the grease-spotted paper instead. And he doesn’t watch his fingers over the string, nor does he question his balance or his sense. Instead he keeps his eyes on the stars, and on NaJedha high above.

Chirrut quietly and efficiently works through one dumpling after the other. He then licks his fingers, one by one, thoughtful and slow. Only when he is done does Baze shake his head, and turn away at last.

“I should go.”

“Baze.”

His voice is very tired – there is nothing in it of his teasing. Baze turns around without second thought. “Yes?”

“Come back. In the morning.” His lips work for a brief moment. “Please.”

And he inclines his head, aching though it now is. It’s still nothing to the hollow of his chest, which wishes only for him to move forward, to take the other man into his arms until it is filled again. “All right,” he says, rough and low, and true. “Good night, Chirrut.”

He goes back to his bachelor’s bed in the city. The constant murmuring of the city beyond has always been there, but it has never before disturbed him so. Baze closes his eyes, looks for sleep in places that he doubts will grant it. Still, he doesn’t even recall when it finds him instead.

 

*****

 

Baze has never feared losing Chirrut – or, more accurately, he has never feared that Chirrut will not be exactly in the last place Baze last saw him. _Baze_ is the one who leaves, _Baze_ is the one who goes away from Jedha. Chirrut is the constant where he is the variable. Never once has Baze returned to NiJedha and not found Chirrut at the temple. But then, the incursion of the Empire should have been warning enough. Their interest in the kyber mines is not overt, but neither is it so covert that the entire city does not know of it. But in the beginning Chirrut had only offered the adamant belief that not even the Emperor would desecrate the land, given how kyber responded only to those strong in the Force.

Something has changed since then. Baze cannot know what, even as he watches Chirrut leading the younger initiates through the early morning devotions. He even finds himself mouthing the words, familiar as Chirrut’s upturned face in the cool morning sun.

But the prayers are but a beginning, and Baze has no intention of interfering with the way of the temple life. Chirrut rises from his seated position, and the children follow like drunken butterflies; once proper circulation is restored, he guides them through a series of weaponless katas. It is done to awaken and centre their spirit, or so they had always been told as children. Chirrut believes it. Baze can tell as much, watching him move in the gleaming morning sun. The faint sight of his own breath is white and sharp upon the chill desert air; in turn he sees nothing from Chirrut, as though he is but a ghost. Shivering, Baze looks to his own hands, and waits.

Chirrut’s sandaled feet have always been near-silent. Baze hears instead its tap along the ground: the staff, with its sliver of kyber shimmering at its head. The Jedi had been the only beings to truly master the sentient ore, though the Sith and other orders held their own sway. For not the first time, Baze hates the blasted stuff. It chains Chirrut here, for all that it will not give itself over to him. And now the kyber draws the Empire’s attention down upon them all. They’ve always been here to protect the kyber, of course. But there has never been any great magnitude of threat: very few would have use for it, outside its value as a basic curiosity. It is strong and brilliant and impossible, and bends only to the wills of those it finds worthy.

Some had said he and Chirrut were the same as the Jedi’s most iconic weapon: he the crafted hilt of the saber, Chirrut the burning crystal within. One the vessel, one the untameable power. It had been but one reason why he’d come to think the temple elders blind, when Chirrut was the one without functional eyes. Chirrut needs no other to complete himself. He is complete unto himself.

“Baze?”

Looking up into the sun, Baze blinks, frowns. Chirrut is perfect silhouette before him: a statue, as clean and clear in its lines as any of the others within the temple complex. Baze will leave Jedha, again. But perhaps this time, when he returns, the temple might be gone – and Chirrut with it.

And he sighs, as if the other man’s thoughts are as open to him as his own. “Baze.” And Chirrut takes a seat at his side, fluid and sure for all his expression is as pensive as his words. “I know I’ve doubted before that you have enough wits to keep them always about you, but must you prove me right?”

His own smile is a small, sad thing. “I’ve brought you breakfast.”

“Ah. First dumplings, now fresh fat tÿa fruit.” His head tilts, bright eyes impossibly watchful. “What is this, Baze? Trying to put some meat on my skinny little bones, again?”

“You need fattening up,” he says, and it’s roughly given even as he gentles the woven bag towards Chirrut’s opened hands. “A decent enough wind, and you’d blow right away.”

“I only blow where I desire to be blown,” he says, straight-faced, as serene as any mantra given over to his students and those seekers who come to the temple for wisdom and peace. Baze finds his face heating all the same, and Chirrut reaches forward, takes the cloth bag with a hand whose fingers linger far too long over Baze’s own.

“Thank you,” he says, suddenly blithe and bright, and again it leaves Baze wordless. As if the weeks before had never happened. But he keeps that to himself as he watches Chirrut rummaging in the bag. After a moment, he manages to pull out the biggest, roundest fruit of them all.

And then he is holding it out between them. “Are you hungry?”

“I’ve already eaten.”

“Liar.” He bites into it with a surprisingly delicate motion, for all most people spurt juice and flesh everywhere when they attempt to eat such a specimen. But Chirrut goes about his meal, as quick as he is fastidious. Baze is reminded again of the little creature in the dark alleway, keeping to his shadows with his bright eyes, always knowing who to ask, and where to go, and never doubting his instinct.

“Why did you want me to betray you?”

The sudden words do not surprise him. “I never called it _betrayal_ , Baze.”

“But I would.”

“I know.” Setting the stone at the centre of the fruit aside, its grooved sides licked clean, Chirrut purses his lips, lets out a slow sigh. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did.”

The distant sound of the bells calls them both, then, deep-throated and divine; Baze feels the strange yearning to answer their call, to follow Chirrut through the arcades to the courtyard, to where proper morning prayers would begin.

But Chirrut does not move. And Baze does not rise. They wait, silent, until the bells are silent and Chirrut, at last, sighs once more.

“We are in times of great danger.”

A frisson of fear jolts down his spine, for all this is no revelation – ever since the purging of the Jedi, they have known their days to be numbered. The guardians are not Jedi, but the Jedi associated with the Whills, and with the kyber that sings beneath their feet: even the Empire hears such harmony. And craves it, too.

Chirrut’s eyes are just as relentless upon him now. “What if this war parts us?” His words are honest, simple. “You cannot tell me you re-entered the city without being challenged. And this is but the beginning.” He draws a sharp breath, lets it go with the explosive words. “What if, one day, you cannot return to NiJedha?”

“Then I keep trying, until I can.” His hands have fisted upon his thighs. “I find a way.”

“And if you still cannot?”

The persistence is nothing new. The tinge of genuine fear beneath it very much is. “Chirrut,” he begins, and then does not know how to continue. Chirrut does not help him this time. He remains silent, waiting with an almost preternatural patience for words that Baze finds clumsy and awkward. “But it’s not even as if this is the first time,” he says, and doesn’t bother to mask the grief of it. “We’ve _been_ apart—”

“But I always knew you would come back,” he says, too sharp. “It was all as the Force willed it.”

“Chirrut,” he says, and his own voice has taken on the ballistic force of his own charged weapon. “This is _why_ I turned from the Force, don’t you realise that?” And then, too quick, before he can quite stop himself: “From what would drive us apart and say it was _good_.”

Though he looks away, Chirrut is not hiding from what he perceives as the truth. “It was not the Force that took your faith and left you hollow,” he says, very quiet. And tiredness overtakes Baze as a sandstorm, leaving his eyes filled with stinging grit and his mouth dry and choked.

“No, it wasn’t.” Again his hands are fists, impotent on his thighs. “Only because it was never _there_. It was a child’s dream to me, Chirrut, and you _know_ that.” And when this receives no immediate response, he tries again, already knows this is doomed to failure. “I’m _glad_ you have faith—”

“Are you truly?” he asks, and it cuts deep; Chirrut usually sheathes the sharpest of his words, but he wields them now as a master swordsman. “Or are you only glad because it keeps me here, even when you leave?” He is relentless, striking again before Baze can block. “And what if you come back, one day, and I am gone?” He stands, now, hands fisted at his sides, entire body shaking with fury. “What will you do _then_?”

Now, he wishes for nothing more than to draw this impossible man down into his embrace, and never again let him go. But Baze can only shake his head, offer one word. “Chirrut.”

It’s soft, and simple. And Chirrut sits down heavy at his side, again, head hung low beneath the drooping curve of his spine. “I admit, it made me happy, the last time. When you said there had been no other.” He turns his face upward, hands tightly held together in his lap. “But this…it’s different, somehow.” One hand rises between them, hesitates for just one moment before fingertips gentle over the rough stubble of his beard. “You cannot be alone, Baze,” he whispers, and withdraws before Baze can turn his face into the cupped palm. “And I don’t want you to be alone.”

Though he could bridge the gap between them, and easily enough, Chirrut has never taken kindly to being man-handled – except, of course, when it is his requested preference of the evening. “That’s my choice,” Baze says, instead, more gently than he’d have thought possible. “And yours, too – but it doesn’t belong to the Force.” He swallows, still finds the words lodged deep in his throat. “Don’t let it take that from us.”

Chirrut’s face turns away, again, to the sun that offers them so little warmth. “You say you don’t trust the Force,” he says, eventual and slow. “That it has taken from you, when it should only have given.” Those bright eyes fix upon his now, seeing so much more than any other could hope to observe. “Do you not think that there are times when _I_ feel the same?”

“No.” It’s startled, and entirely honest. “You have always had more faith than me.”

“Because I _work_ for it!”

Chirrut’s anger comes as sudden and unexpected as the winter rainstorms above NiJedha – but Baze’s own answers it just as quick. “And you think I did not? In those _years_ I spent here, under these rooves, upon these stones?” He’s on his feet now, pacing, hating that the rhythm of it is as exactly the same as the count of Chirrut’s steps before. “I came here as a child, expecting some great awakening to be waiting for me. I worked for it – waited for it. I knew it would come, wash away my doubts, prove that everything I had believed it was true.” He turns, stills, voice a trembling confession. “And it never came,” he says, bare bleeding whisper. “It was never here at all.”

Chirrut sits before him, now. Only Chirrut. “Wasn’t it?”

He’s shivering, but the chill of the air is but mere discomfort. “Chirrut,” he whispers, and nothing more. He only smiles, hopeful and so very terribly sad. Everyone has always said Chirrut talks too much. But perhaps that has only been because Chirrut has always _known_ too much.

“Yes, Baze?” he asks, very gentle, and it is over. Baze closes his eyes, and gives up.

“I won’t leave you,” he whispers. “If you will never leave me.”

“I’ve always been here, Baze.” He’s standing, drawing close; Baze does not know the darkness as intimately as Chirrut, but he hears enough to know his approach. “I always will be here,” he adds, his hands so careful over broad arms, trembling fists. “I cannot leave this place. Not while it stands. Not while I am still guardian. I know that. I accept that.” His voice breaks then – more like glass than storm. “But the only thing I ever really wanted – that I ever really _asked_ for – was _you_.” And he draws a trembling breath. “But if you cannot stay here—”

Baze does not ask, but pulls him close. Chirrut comes to him without protest, and for all his strength, his power: he seems so frail, now. So uncertain, when he has built his entire life through stubborn faith. When they’d been young, faces turned towards the sky, Baze had wondered once. _Do you ever ask for it back?_ Baze had asked. _Your sight?_ And Chirrut’s answering chuckle had been so wise and so knowing, even on the lesser side of childhood. _I have what I need_ , he had said. _I know better than to ask for more than that._

Baze had never asked again. But now, he knows it for a mistake. It is one he will rectify, over and over again. “Where will the elders not look for you?” he asks, lips pressed to the rough stubble of his hair. Chirrut sighs, just a little.

“The solarium.”

Jedha’s soil can be made fertile, for all it lacks water and heat enough to support much in the way of plantlife. But the people of her villages and the holy city had adapted, and none so successfully as the guardians: the great conservatories of the temple are lovelier than even those of the city. They are usually hives of activity, between the temple initiates and the cultivated insects that pollenate and produce their own sweet honey in the combs set out for them. But as Chirrut leads him there, Baze trailing half a step behind with Chirrut’s palm tight against his own, they find it quiet, the others away at prayer. And he’s familiar enough with the morning rituals to know there will be time enough, for this.

“Do you remember?”

Already he smiles, faint and true; he does not need to ask what it is that Chirrut speaks of. That year before things went bad – before Baze put down his staff and robe, and walked out of the temple, never again to return as a guardian – they had come here together, with but one another. It had been such a simple thing, the ceremony. In fact, it could have been performed between only them together, and it would have been held to be just as binding. It’s not a private thing, precisely. Merely: intimate, and designed principally for the benefit of those it binds together. Baze knows of the great wedding ceremonies of other planets. But this has always been good enough for those of the holy city.

Their only attendant – and officiant – had been Dewan Rendig, one of the elders of indeterminable age. He’d seemed almost amused by the whole thing, as if he’d thought they would have done this already, years before. And the gardens, in full spring bloom, had been an intoxicating vision. Some might have wondered what Chirrut cared for their surroundings, given he could see nothing of the great beauty of the gardens. But he had sensed it. With his hands held tight between his own, Baze had known the great peace in him then, in tilt of his head towards the light.

“Strip.”

Just a single word, so at odds with the florid vows Chirrut has spouted off that day until, laughing, Baze had begged him to stop. Without a word of his own, now, he obeys. It’s warm, in here – unlike most of Jedha proper. But the transparisteel invites, insulates, holds the sunlight close to what it cradles within. And Chirrut’s gaze upon him is heat enough of its own, for all it is not with his eyes that he sees.

Only when he is finished does Chirrut move forward. Even as he does so, he strips away his robe, leaving him only in light undershirt and trousers. He bends, one hand mapping the ground before he lays it out, smoothing it out over the mossed ground sit aside for the ritual and blessing of those who work within the conservatories.

“Lie down.”

He does, and he waits, face turned towards the shimmer of the sky overhead. A moment, and then there is nothing but Chirrut: naked and smooth, pressed between his gently inclined thighs. Already his hands move over him in slow demand, cupping his hips before skating up over his chest, his throat, his face: mapping each feature, as though Baze could have changed so much in the time since last he had done this. And then Baze cannot remember the last time Chirrut had touched him in this precise way, and his abdomen tightens.

“No,” Chirrut says, and his hand moves down, soothes light over his belly. “No regrets,” he adds, very soft; his fingers walk a clever ladder down a trail of coarse dark hair. “Not when we have now.”

One eyebrow rises, tone light for all it hurts. “After what you said?”

He’s smiling, bright and wide, for all there’s still sadness in it too. “I was afraid.” He leans down, whispers the words against still lips. “But I’m not afraid, anymore.”

Then he is kissing him, soft and careful. But Chirrut has ever had little patience in just pressing lips to lips; mere seconds pass before he moves on elsewhere, tracing back over his jaw, mouthing the stubbled skin. At the hint of a tongue against the lobe of one ear, the shadow of teeth but a moment behind, Baze sighs, lets his eyes fall closed. Chirrut chuckles, the shuddering sound a shiver over skin, and his own hands clench in the soft worn fabric that is scented of nothing but Chirrut.

“How can I let you go?” he whispers. “When there is nothing that could ever truly part us?”

“Chirrut—”

Lips close over his again, more to silence than to rouse, but given Chirrut also uses the opportunity to press closer, slipping between his thighs and leaning his weight against him, it does do both with magnificent victory. And Baze can do nothing but surrender to the undulating strength of his smooth body, slender and impossible. Their pricks, hardening by the moment, press together, shifting with a friction that has them both gasping, though naturally it sounds more as if Chirrut is _laughing_.

And then Chirrut turns his head, lying upon him, head tilted as he listens to the quicksilver beat of Baze’s heart. It is but an illusion of peace, of course; already one hand shifts down with mischievous purpose, and a moment later curls knowing around his prick. His fingers are oiled and deliciously slick, for all Baze has no idea how and when Chirrut had achieved such a thing. But that is but one of the many mysteries of Chirrut Îmwe, and one Baze had stopped trying to solve years ago. Chirrut has always been ready to take what he wants, at the very moment it is first offered to him.

And still his light, even breath moves across Baze’s convulsing throat like laughter; his callused hand still works its dark magics, knowing of the angle and stroke Baze appreciates most. Fingertips graze over his balls, and he gasps, feels them tighten as though climax is but a clumsy moment away; in revenge Bazes raises a hand of his own, passes the palm light over first one nipple, then the other. Chirrut snorts, and then he’s tickling Baze behind one ear. His great chest judders with his amusement, enough to dislodge him.

And as Chirrut leans back, pouts down at him, Baze only grins all the wider. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

His hand moves down, traces the wide lines of Baze’s laughing mouth. “I do like to help myself,” he says, soft, “to that which I want most.”

His breath catches, chest tight and too full – and of course Chirrut takes perfect advantage, sliding one hand down between his thighs, curving it up along the seam of his buttocks. Then, without any further warning: he slips inside. Though it is but one finger, Baze draws a sharp breath – even now, it is never easy. But Chirrut is patient, and Chirrut presses first lips and then ear to the place where his heart beats strong. Only when it calms, again, does he move to two. Baze closes his eyes, wills his body’s quicker response; surely the others are looking for Chirrut, by now.

But Chirrut is concerned only with this. He rushes nothing, fingers dipping and curving in slow thrust; only when Baze’s prick is again hard and damp against his belly, and his passage loose and twitching at every gentle drag over the bundle of nerves within, does Chirrut smile and rise again. Baze knows his thighs are spread wantonly wide now, but he doesn’t care when it is Chirrut positioning himself between them. And he is not so far gone that he doesn’t reach forward, steadying, hands upon his waist, for all Chirrut doesn’t really need it. But it is a way of accepting him in, drawing him deep.

“Chirrut?” he asks, sudden. And in turn, he raises a curious eyebrow, as if they are taking nothing more than tea together.

“Yes?”

“There are few in the galaxy who would put up with your nonsense,” he says, soft and deadly serious. “And I’d kill every single one of them, just to keep you to myself.”

“ _Baze_.” And he lets out a most put upon sigh – and one well performed, for a man who currently thrusts deep into another. “That’s hardly _romantic_.”

In answer Baze first arches his back, drawing him only deeper. And then he subsides into the familiar texture of Chirrut’s robe, and for a moment lies breathless and still. “Says the man married to an assassin,” he adds, ragged, after long moments of thrust and pull.

And now Chirrut slows, and then he stops: it had been a mistake, perhaps. But Chirrut does not turn away, does not draw back. Instead he curves over him in possessive arch, forehead to his, still deep within him, all pulsing solid heat.

“You were not an assassin when I married you,” he says, soft. “But you are now.” He draws back, shoves right to the hilt. “And that is all I ask for,” he says, and of course he sounds as though he is laughing, again. “ _You_.”

Every moment of it is demanding, asking of him things Baze can barely comprehend, let alone answer to. But he does. Every moment they are together feels like rebellion, for all it also feels as inevitable as the sun’s rising every moment. It’s Chirrut who comes first, but he does not pause even as his body trembles with his release; his hand works hard over Baze’s aching prick, drawing him over the same edge even as Baze closes his own fingers around him, guiding Chirrut guiding him, always moving as one.

But even as Chirrut curls up against him, as intent about his planned repose as an indolent felid, Baze squints at the sky, the angle of the sun. “Don’t you have devotions to return to?”

Chirrut gives a showy yawn, but otherwise does not move. “Hmm. Perhaps.” At Baze’s grunt, he snickers, masked only by the kiss then pressed to his lips. “I am a very busy man, after all.”

“And I am not?”

“I grew up with you, Baze Malbus. I know when you intend to bat those big brown eyes of yours at me, and have me do your bidding.”

“Well.” He frowns, stretches even beneath Chirrut’s weight. “I suppose I’d like a good breakfast, then.”

Now he rises, face bright with pleasure as he pokes him with one still-sandaled foot. “Get up off my robe, Baze, you’re wrinkling it.”

Much as he might have wished to stay there all day, he has no intention of being stumbled upon by some poor unsuspecting guardian. And in truth, there are matters to be attended to down in the city. Still, once they are both dressed, Baze is unable to help himself; a kiss, lingering and longing, is pressed to Chirrut’s lips. “Shall I come back later?”

Chirrut steps back, shakes his head. “No.”

The hurt of it is sudden; he had thought the worst of this had passed. “No?”

And he’s smiling, staff in one hand, Baze’s chin in the other. “Have some faith, Baze,” he whispers into one last kiss. And then, he steps quickly away, already whistling a familiar devotional tune. Baze snorts, again, and turns to make his own way back to the city. His own step is slightly more stilted, but he cannot complain at the ache of it. Not as he walks past places of solemn meditation and prayer, while knowing that Chirrut had only asked for just this one thing.

Night is coming on when Baze sits down at last, wincing; a pot of tea is steeping upon the small counter, and after a few moments of peace he will go to seek out a decent meal. A knock upon the door interrupts his musing, and he frowns as he glances upward.

“Yes?”

The handle turns with no heed to the fact it is locked, and a figure slips inside. But Baze’s hand pauses where it has reached for his blaster, and he lets it go once more. An armful of blossoms has entered his rooms, though the legs and staff beneath are entirely familiar.

And from behind their haunting scent a face appears, brilliant in its grin. “I thought it might cheer the place up,” he says, and he’s already unloading it fussily upon the one small space Baze uses to clean and maintain his weapons. “Give it some colour, yes?”

“ _Chirrut_.”

He carefully arranges it, steps back, head tilted in critical assessment. Then, just as blithe, Chirrut strips himself bare, and flops down onto Baze’s bed.

“Or am I alone colour enough, do you think?” And then he laughs, one hand already moving to his prick. “Well, do hurry up, Baze. I can’t tell, myself. I’m _blind_ , or did you forget?”

He has no words – only something like laughter. Something like tears. And then it doesn’t matter what it was, for he is upon him and Chirrut’s hands are in turn on his own skin and he never wants to be anywhere else ever again.


End file.
